"Thus Much I Must Confess Unto You For A Conclusion, That I Have Never
Seen Nor Never Shall See A Wise Lady, An Honourable Woman, A Mother,
More Perplexed For Her Son's Absence Than I Have Seen That Honourable
Dame For Yours."[155]
It was not only a general hatred of Roman Catholics which made staunch
Protestants anxious to detain their sons from foreign travel towards the
end of Elizabeth's reign, but a very lively and well-grounded fear of
the Inquisition and the Jesuits.
When England was at war with Spain, any
Englishman caught on Spanish territory was a lawful prisoner for ransom;
and since Spanish territory meant Sicily, Naples, and Milan, and Rome
was the territory of Spain's patron, the Pope, Italy was far from safe
for Englishmen and Protestants. Even when peace with Spain was declared,
on the accession of James I., the spies of the Inquisition were
everywhere on the alert to find some slight pretext for arresting
travellers and to lure them into the dilemma of renouncing their faith,
or being imprisoned and tortured. There is a letter, for instance, to
Salisbury from one of his agents on the Continent, concerning overtures
made to him by the Pope's nuncio, to decoy some Englishman of
note - young Lord Roos or Lord Cranborne - into papal dominions, where he
might be seized and detained, in hope of procuring a release for Baldwin
the Jesuit.[156] William Bedell, about to go to Italy as chaplain to Sir
Henry Wotton, the Ambassador to Venice, very anxiously asks a friend
what route is best to Italy. "For it is told me that the Inquisition is
in Millaine, and that if a man duck not low at every Cross, he may be
cast in prison.... Send me, I pray you, a note of the chief towns to be
passed through. I care not for seeing places, but to go thither the
shortest and safest way."[157]
Bedell's fears were not without reason, for the very next year occurred
the arrest of the unfortunate Mr Mole, whose case was one of the
sensations of the day. Fuller, in his Church History, under the year
1607, records how -
"About this time Mr Molle, Governour to the Lord Ross in his travails,
began his unhappy journey beyond the Seas.... He was appointed by
Thomas, Earl of Exeter, to be Governour in Travail to his Grandchilde,
the Lord Ross, undertaking the charge with much reluctance (as a presage
of ill successe) and with a profession, and a resolution not to passe
the Alpes.
"But a Vagari took the Lord Ross to go to Rome, though some conceive
this notion had its root in more mischievous brains. In vain doth Mr
Molle dissuade him, grown now so wilfull, he would in some sort govern
his Governour. What should this good man doe? To leave him were to
desert his trust, to goe along with him were to endanger his own life.
At last his affections to his charge so prevailed against his judgment,
that unwillingly willing he went with him.
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